Very sad to learn of the death of Michael Tilson Thomas so soon after the death of his lifelong partner Joshua Robison. We last saw him 18 months ago when the two of them came to see us when he was here to give what was to be his last concert with the LSO – a remarkable performance of Mahler 2. He was extraordinarily brave in continuing to conduct in spite of the brain cancer which was diagnosed in 2021 and which he openly acknowledged.
I knew him for well over 40 years, and worked with him many times when he was the LSO’s principal conductor in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequently in San Francisco and in Miami, where his New World Symphony will be a lasting legacy. The photograph with both of them was taken in Cologne in 1992.